and died, were God's children, and we are no more. With the nations
dead and turned to dust, we reach out through the darkness of
forgotten days and touch friendly hands. Some of these people that
existed two, three or four thousand years ago did things so
marvelously grand and great that in presence of the broken fragments
of their work we stand silent, o'erawed and abashed. We realize,
too, that long before the nations lived that have left a meager and
scattered history hewn in stone, lived still other men, possibly
greater far than we; and no sign or signal comes to us from those
whose history, like ours, is writ in water.

Yet we are one with them all. The same Power that brought them upon
this stage of Time brought us. As we were called into existence
without our consent, so are we being sent out of it, day by day,
against our will. The destiny of all who live or have lived, is one;
and no taunt of "paganism," "heathenism" or "infidelity" escapes our
lips. With love and sympathy, we salute the eternity that lies
behind, realizing that we ourselves are the oldest people that have
tasted existence--the newest nation lingers away behind Assyria and
Egypt, back of the Mayas, lost in continents sunken in shoreless
seas that hold their secrets inviolate. Yes, we are brothers to all
that have trod the earth; brothers and heirs to dust and shade--
mayhap to immortality!


In the story of "John Ball," William Morris pictured what to him was
the Ideal Life. And Morris was certainly right in this: The Ideal
Life is only the normal or natural life as we shall some day know
it. The scene of Morris' story was essentially a Preraphaelite one.
It was the great virtue (or limitation) of William Morris that the